Thursday, April 28, 2011

Awake and Posting

Thought I'd drop in for a quick post.  I was going to do one tonight anyway, but I'm up before my alarm, might as well use my time for something.  Our hot water heater died, and my wife woke up to find the utility room floor covered in water.  I'm way up here in Elkins, so I can't help, other than to tell her to call the warranty company.

I've measured my runs from Monday and Tuesday, both around 4.5ish miles.  It's very hilly here, even more than where I currently run.  This is the highest part of the state, and my next post I should have some great pictures from the areas we're inspecting in.  Does spending a week around 4000 feet count as altitude training?

Last night I ran on the treadmill here at the hotel because of the storms.  We aren't getting it as badly as the southern and Midwestern states, but the weather did say that we got a tornado last night.  After getting caught in the rain Tuesday, and the storms last night, I may run on the treadmill again tonight for a hard workout instead of risking the rain in an unfamiliar town.

That's all for now, breakfast time.  CONTINENTAL breakfast time!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Malfunction

So I know I claimed there would be posts all week about my running and bridge inspection adventures in Moorefield, WV.  Apparently the South Branch Inn in Moorefield had other plans.

I couldn't keep an internet connection for more than 3 minutes at a time.  Those 3 minutes had to be spent on work stuff, such as downloading my emails and such.  Not only do I have actual work stuff going on, but I'm currently the team captain for my office's Susan G. Komen team, and team packet pickup was last week (more on that later).

So what did you miss?  I'll try to be brief, really only a couple of good stories from the road:

I had a nice interval run on Monday, no idea how far, but I did 15 reps of one minute at race effort, one minute jogging rest.  Tuesday I did a fairly hard 7 mile run in the mountains, the scenery was nice, there were some cows (moo).  We went to the restaurant across the street (The Stray Cat, a Mexican bar and grill) for dinner, and a few drinks.  I ate some very very hot wings, and ended up with heartburn.  About 9 I decided the best way to deal with it was to go back across the street and have a couple of more beers and watch basketball.  When I got there, a couple of guys who'd been there drinking all evening were causing trouble and wouldn't leave.  They argued for a while, the bartender threatened to call the cops, the dishwasher threatened to meet them out back for a fight, but finally they left and I got to relax, have another beer, and watch the ball game.  My heartburn just wouldn't give up, so I walked up the street at about 11 to the gas station and get something for it.  On the way back, the bartender from The Stray Cat was driving by and gave me a ride back to the hotel.

Wednesday I got a terrible sunburn and felt like crap the rest of the week.  Wednesday afternoon, we encountered a big black snake laying on one of the rails in the sun.  My inspecting partner apparently isn't so good with snakes - meaning sometime in the future, I will be purchasing a rubber snake for inspection trips.  I managed to hold down the snakes head, grab it, and toss it off the bridge into the woods, easy as pie!  I can now add snake wrangler to my (exceptionally long) list of qualifications.  Boring weekend, didn't get to visit my family on Easter because of the trip here for inspection this week, and my grass hasn't been mowed for over 2 weeks because of the weather.

Speaking of this week, I am now in Elkins, WV, up in the mountains.  The Holiday Inn Express has a much more reliable internet connection, meaning I can not only take care of work things, but also hobbies like blogging.  I should be able to find something good to write about this week.  I plan to run everyday if possible, today included - but I've still got to measure what I did today to find out how far it is.  Less than 2 weeks until I race!

Friday, April 15, 2011

Adam Afield

Next time you hear from me I'll be in sunny (hopefully) Moorefield, WV, doing railroad bridge inspections.  While it will be hard to balance my training over the next two weeks, this is a great opportunity to do some flat ground running and see some of the more remote parts of the state.

Not much has been going on since we last spoke, which is why I haven't posted anything.  Just another week here at the office, another week of getting up earlier than I want to fit in my running.  I still feel like my progress is slower than I'd like, but I am continuing to progress.

I'm hoping to have something interesting or exciting to blog about during inspections next week - cool pictures, hand-repairing parts of the railroad using only my bulging weight room muscles, wrestling a mountain lion to protect women and children camping along the river, that sort of stuff.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Reconnect...or, Quit Procrastinating Your Life

 2 months since my last "Rocky and Bullwinkle" post title (which not so coincidentally, I watched this weekend), so it seemed like time to pull another one out.

My running is going well, I ran 10 on Saturday, an easy 4 on Sunday, and 400m repeats this morning.  I might even venture so far as to say it's going really well.  I'm not quite where I want to be, but I've got a solid 2 weeks left to continue making gains.  I've really started to dial in my training.  Those who've been following this for a while (I say this as if thousands are reading my posts...) know that I suffered motivational issues earlier in the year (which I whined about like a little girl here, here, and here).  I seem to have overcome those, which tends to be how I do things - as an engineer, I see a problem, I solve the problem, I figure out how to implement the solution.  But if I don't see the problem (or if I'm not reminded of it at a time which is convenient for me to work on it), it doesn't get addressed...


Cleaapolooza started with a bang, but ended with a fizzle.  I worked all day Saturday at the house, but when Sunday came I just didn't have anymore in me.  I ended up doing a little that morning, then wasting most of the rest of the day - except for mowing the yard Sunday evening, which takes a couple of hours.

So cleaning has been an issue, one which I'm implementing a solution to.  My latest problem is a long-running laziness about keeping in touch with people.  I'm bad at it.  How can this be, in the age of Facebook and constant text messaging?  I'm still working on that...

This is already running long.  Enough rambling.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Sunshine, You Are My Sunshine

Looks like spring might actually be here!  70s all week (waking up to 50s, perfect running weather), the first yard-mowing weekend of the year coming up, and just 4 short weeks until my first 5k of 2011!  Forgive me for talking about the weather, but for runners, I feel like weather is actually an acceptable topic during a conversation.

I had a murderous 4 mile tempo run this morning.  I wanted to go 7:00, the effort was there, but the speed just wasn't.  It ended up around 7:15, which is slightly under what I did two weeks ago over 3 miles, so I'm not completely dissatisfied with it.  I just feel like I should have made better progress, even with inspection work limiting me last week.





I'm pretty much back on schedule now, but my running future is looking shaky.  This weekend will be a two day running, mowing, and cleaning extravaganza at my house.  My wife has to work the weekend, and with me busy last week and her sick this week, there's a lot to catch up on.

I've got next week here in the office, then I start inspection again the week after that - probably.  We're shuffling the schedule around again for it, so it isn't certain.  What is looking certain is that my performance will suffer.  I'm not hitting the benchmarks in training that I wanted to hit by now, and a hectic schedule will only make that worse.


But as always, I've got a plan!  I'm a planner.  I can be spontaneous, and unpredictable - when I plan to be.

The first step is to adjust my expectations.  I need to take a realistic look at where I'm at, and what I think I can do in the first race, and train accordingly.  Step two is to adjust my workouts to the new situation - long hours in the field, sleeping at a hotel, and running unfamiliar (and unmeasured) routes.  For my hard workouts I plan to do a Kenyan workout that the categorize as a fartlek (I'd almost call it intervals).  Warm up, then go race pace for 60s, jog for 60s.  Repeat.  I plan to do 15 of them on my first workout and see how that goes.  For everything else, again, I plan to borrow from the Kenyans.  I'll run by feel, and base things on time instead of distance.

And since I'll have my laptop with me to do inspection reports, I'll be able to keep you all abreast (giggles) of the situation and how things are working out.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Present and Accounted For

I'm back!

I had to disappear for a little, but I'm back to blogging, advising, and generally ranting about running.  Where did I go, you may be asking yourself (or maybe you're just thinking "Shut up, we don't care anymore")?  As a bridge engineer, one of the few times I get to go out into the field is on bridge inspections. 

I spent the last week free climbing steel, repelling columns, pecking on things with a hammer, and freezing in the cold damp weather.  We were inspecting an out of service railroad bridge that may (or may not, depending on the cost) get turned into a rails-to-trails bike path over the Kanawha river sometime in the future.
 

The main span of the bridge.  We repelled down those columns into a john-boat.



Old wooden columns, we call these "bents".  A lot of these were in a bad part of town, we had to examine all of them - climbing some, using a lift vehicle, or using a ladder.



Repelling one of the piers in full gear, about 40' off of the water
Oh yea, and I ran a couple of times.  I did a few hard workouts last week, but didn't get any extra mileage in beyond that.  I just didn't feel up to it most days.  Repelling is hard on the lower back, hips, and thighs, and up on a bridge it is always windy, so my face was wind-burnt pretty much all week.  I probably used a half bottle of aloe trying to get my skin to recover.

With that all behind me, I can get in a few hard weeks of training and mileage.  My first race, the Susan Komen Race for the Cure, is the first weekend of May.  I'm the team captain for our office team - meaning basically that I do all of our book keeping and disseminate information when needed.  I've got 2 more weeks of inspection in late April, so I may have to scale back my time goal for the race depending how my training goes while I am in the field.

I've felt kind of slow during my past few hard workouts, but been able to compensate with extra effort.  I think inconsistency in my mileage is to blame, hopefully I'll be able to get back into my routine for a couple of weeks before I head off for inspection again.

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